The Threat of Trump

The media attacks on Trump have become relentless. For some reason, Washington Post headlines show up in my Facebook feed, and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the news stories from the opinion pieces—they all merge into a seemingly endless anti-Trump torrent. One example: a news story on Trump's economic policy team was headlined "Trump's economic team has six men named Steve and no women."

The media has gone berserk over any number of stories. Some of the stories are simply false—such as the oft-repeated claim that Trump shamed a mother of a crying infant into removing her child from a Trump rally in Virginia. Others are exaggerated or distorted, such as the continuing media hysteria over Trump and the Khan family. The media used that story to paint Trump—who has made the need to improve care for veterans one of the centerpieces of his campaign—as an enemy of military families. But Khizr Khan did not criticize Trump over his attitude toward the military; he took to the podium at the Democratic national Convention to criticize Trump's call for a temporary moratorium on Islamic immigration. Khan wants continued Islamic immigration, and he used the example of his son, killed in service in Iraq in 2004, to argue that attempts to restrict Islamic immigration are morally wrong. Trump was asked about Khizr Khan's charge that Trump had sacrificed nothing for America by ABC's George Stephonopoulos, who used to work in the Clinton White House. Trump denied Khan's charge, and also wondered whether Khan's wife, who wore a hijab and stood silently at his side throughout his convention speech, had been forbidden from speaking, in accordance with at least some Islamic custom. This simple exchange set off a media frenzy that has not yet abated.

Of course, left virtually unmentioned in all the coverage of this matter is the substance of the disagreement between Khan and Trump. Very few of those stories have noted that America has continued to receive roughly 100,000 Moslem immigrants each year since 9/11, when other Moslems murdered 3,000 Americans. Very few of those stories have highlighted the Islamic terror attacks, both in America and in Europe, that have recently become routine occurrences. And no mainstream media story on the Khans and Trump has mentioned the remarkable fact uncovered by Steve Sailer that there have been more Americans killed by Moslems wearing American uniforms since 9/11 than there have been Moslems killed in service to America during the same time period. The media coverage of Trump suggests that all American Moslems are like Captain Khan, ignoring the fact that other American Moslems have been like Major Hasan, who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers at Ft. Hood.

One of the reasons for the media's frenzy, of course, is that a belief in "multiculturalism" and "diversity" has become a religion for many in our elite. Belief in this new religion is shown in the media's coverage of Trump's economic team, the Khan controversy, and many other stories. The believers in this new faith see Trump as a heretic, and the wish to punish him for this heresy is palpable. There are few so intolerant as those who have made a fetish of their belief in what they like to call "tolerance."

Another reason for the media frenzy is the threat Trump poses to the globalist consensus of the Bush-Clinton-Obama years. Indeed, all three of our new political dynasties—and all their hangers on—are united in opposition to Trump. The Clintons, of course, are running a fierce campaign against him. President Obama has made a point of denouncing Trump as being "unfit" to be president, while noting that he did not feel the same way about McCain or Romney, both of whom shared Obama's belief in the virtues of mass immigration and free trade. And the Bushes have ostentatiously refused to endorse Trump, with George W. Bush recently emerging from his well-earned obscurity to warn a crowd of rich Republicans of the dangers posed by "isolationism, nativism, and protectionism." What all those believers in the Bush-Clinton-Obama consensus want was highlighted by another upholder of that consensus, House Speaker Paul Ryan. In another speech to wealthy Republicans, Ryan pledged to "repudiate" the view of Republican voters opposed to free trade, even though, as the Breitbart article on Ryan's speech noted, polls show that Republican voters are even more skeptical of free trade than Democratic voters are. The rise of Trump has made it much harder for the Bushes and the Ryans and all those who believe what they do to ignore the views of ordinary Republicans, which is why the Bushes are openly opposing Trump and why Ryan continues to denounce Trump to the media, even after formally pledging to vote for him.

Many of the recent media attacks on Trump have focused on his temperament, with many even questioning his sanity, including the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson and Kathleen Parker, the New York Times' Maureen Dowd, and The American Conservative's Rod Dreher, who compared Trump to Dr. Strangelove's General Jack D. Ripper. But if Trump loses in November, such attacks will be forgotten and the media consensus will be that Trump lost because of his deviations from the Bush-Clinton-Obama consensus, not his temperament. And if Trump loses, the push for globalism and multicultaralism, temporarily halted during his candidacy, will only intensify